Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

As the government amendments are being moved in a block, we will support them, but we will note some brief concerns and reserve our right to address these in the Senate. The majority of these changes come out of the inquiry process and improve the bill. A notable omission is removing the overly high bar from public hearings the exceptional circumstances test creates. This was not in the Labor election commitment on this and appears to have been created as the result of a deal between Labor and the coalition. In particular, clarifying that people in front of the NACC may disclose to a medical practitioner or psychologist that they have been called to appear allows them to receive appropriate support and health care. Likewise, additional supports to enable disabled and vulnerable people to comply with the non-disclosure requirement are entirely appropriate and respond to the evidence raised in the inquiry about the need for these. If a non-disclosure agreement is issued to someone who doesn't fully understand the requirements or penalties, then clearly that person requires additional support.

The changes that require summons and warrants issued by the NACC to be given to the inspector empower that body further, as is appropriate. The inspector should not just be looking for corruption within the NACC but have the powers and resources to consider overreach by the body. The issue of better protecting journalist informants was raised by many stakeholders in the course of the inquiry. A strong and independent press is a key feature of democracy and is in itself an anticorruption feature, so limiting the impact of the NACC on journalism is important. Where a warrant is issued for journalist materials, amendment (16) applies the public interest test, which better balances the need for the NACC to do its job with the protection of journalist access.

There are, however, some government amendments we oppose. Amendment (4) seeks to remove existing clause 8(1)(e) from the NACC Bill—and (3) is consequential on this. Clause 8(1)(e) reads as follows:

any conduct of a public official in that capacity that constitutes, involves or is engaged in for the purpose of corruption of any other kind.

It is intended to function as a catch-all clause for the definition of 'corrupt conduct' for the matters not covered under (a) and (b), which relate to breaches of public trust, abuse of office or misuse of information, specifically.

The primary concern is, if (e) is removed, there are potentially a class of matters where it is apparent that corruption has happened but the NACC is unable to investigate, at risk of serious legal challenges from cashed-up targets. Some of the actions the public would expect to be covered by the remit of the NACC could potentially be excluded following this amendment—for instance, the Morrison secret ministries, which the public sees as a deep abuse of process but it is possible they may not be seem to be covered by 8(a) to (d), and third parties trying to corrupt government through post-political employment, like Peter Reith with Tenix, and where political donations result in changed policy outcomes. The section is designed to futureproof the NACC's jurisdiction to catch changing and emerging activities that corrupt the federal government.

The argument against keeping the provision is that it's too broad. This misses the point that to be captured under this provision the conduct must be serious or systematic corruption. That's a pretty clear set of boundaries that most people outside of parliament can understand. We need a broad definition of 'corruption' for the NACC because the political system keeps coming up with new ways to betray the public interest. If you told someone 12 months ago the Prime Minister would grant himself a bunch of secret powers and ministries, they would have laughed. But politics keeps surprising us in new and novel ways, and we need the NACC to have the jurisdiction to keep on top of this.

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